Crane. 391 



GRUID.E (THE CRANES). 



The magnificent birds which comprise this family may be said 

 to occupy the position among the Waders which the Bustards 

 enjoy among the Ground-birds. Of great size, tall and erect, 

 they are a stately race, and stalk among their fellows with elegant 

 and lordly mien : the few species known in Europe are all migra- 

 tory; and their chief peculiarity consists in the long, flowing, 

 flexible, and arched feathers (reminding one of the plumes of 

 the Ostrich) ; which, curled at the end, and springing from the 

 wing, overhang the tail, and which the bird can erect or depress 

 at pleasure. 



142. CRANE (Grus cinerea). 



Though once known in England as the Common Crane, this 

 specific title is a sad misnomer, for this handsome bird is now 

 become exceedingly scarce ; indeed, an occasional straggler alone 

 visits us at rare intervals. But a hundred years ago it formed 

 an important item at all state banquets, and was the noble 

 quarry at which falconers were wont to fly their largest hawks. 

 As with the Bustard, so with the Crane, by an Act passed 

 (25 Henry VIII., cap. xi.) A.D. 1534, to 'avoid the destruction of 

 wilde fowle,' it was prohibited to ' take the egges upon peine of 

 imprisonment for one yere, and to lose and forfeit for every egge 

 of any Crane so taken or distroid xx pence.'* But even as late 

 as 1780 it must have continued to breed in England, for it was 

 decreed by the Fen Laws of that year 'that no person shall 

 bring up or take any Swan's egg, or Crane's egg, or young birds 

 of that kind, on pain of forfeiting for every offence three shillings 

 and four pence.'f It was pretty generally distributed over all 

 unenclosed districts, whenever uncultivated tracts enabled it to 

 roam undisturbed ; and doubtless our wide-spreading downs 

 afforded it a welcome retreat : but now the ornithologist must go 

 to foreign lands to see this noble bird in a wild state. In Egypt 



* J. E. Harting in Zoologist for 1886, p. 84. 



f Cordeaux's Birds of the Humber District, 'p. 100. 



